< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
575
WHAT PRAGMATISM IS
active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular, than in the fact that it must be active.

All this seems to be perfectly plain and simple, but, in view of the misunderstandings that are still current concerning the principle, due largely to flagrant, if not wilful misrepresentations, and as this is the beginning point of the "new philosophy," I trust that you will pardon still further extracts. The gifted lecturer tells us that "to take in the importance of this principle, one must get accustomed to applying it to concrete cases," and the entire address is devoted to such applications along religious and philosophical lines. He says:

This is one of its first consequences. Suppose there are two different philosophical definitions, or propositions, or maxims, or what not, which seem to contradict each other, and about which men dispute. If, by supposing the truth of the one, you can see no conceivable practical consequences to anybody at any time or place, which is different from what you would foresee if you supposed the truth of the other, why then the difference between the two propositions is no difference,—it is only a specious and verbal difference, unworthy of further contention. Both formulas mean radically the same thing, although they may. say it in such different words. It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test. There can be no difference which doesn't make a difference—no difference in abstract truth which does not express itself in a difference of concrete fact, and of conduct consequent upon the fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen.

After stating that "it is the English-speaking philosophers who first introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking what difference they make for life," he adds:

Mr. Peirce has only expressed in the form of an explicit maxim what their sense for reality led them all instinctively to do. The great English way of investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, What is it known oat In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value, in terms of particular experience? And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false?

Finally, he says:

For what seriousness can possibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that will never make an appreciable difference to us in action? And what matters it, when all propositions are practically meaningless, which of them be called true or false?

Expressed in these different ways but all meaning the same thing, it would seem that Dr. Schiller was right in saying that the principle

ought to be regarded as the greatest truism, if it had not pleased intellectualists to take it as the greatest paradox.

After all that has been written on the subject, a writer has quite recently said:

Ninety-five per cent., and a little more, of all who have rallied so valiantly to the pragmatic banner totally misunderstand the new philosophy. And it is even nearer the truth to say that one hundred per cent, of all the critics who to their own satisfaction have completely demolished the pragmatic structure have fired their shots at the wrong target.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.